Chapter 886: Transfer of Backward Industries

The economic colonization of the Abyssinian Empire is an important step in establishing the East African economic circle, because it is the only country with a good economic scale and independence around East Africa.

Like other countries and regions, except for Cape Town in the UK and the Red Sea Colony in Italy, none of them has a population of over one million.

Cape Town has an early development history. It has experienced hundreds of years of development from the Netherlands to the UK. After the end of the South African War, a large number of Boers returned to the Cape Town Colony, which further increased the population of Cape Town.

The initial concentration of the Red Sea Colony was the result of the overflow of the population from the Apennine Peninsula. After Germany, Italy has become the mainstream group of European immigrants. In the past few years, Mozambique and Angola in East Africa have absorbed many Italian immigrants.

This has enabled the Italian immigrant group in East Africa to quickly catch up with the Slavic immigrant group. However, the Slavic immigrant group in East Africa mainly comes from various regions in the southern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To a certain extent, it has been deeply influenced by Germanization, while the number of Slavic immigrants from Tsarist Russia is not large.

The situation of the countries surrounding East Africa is that except for the Abyssinian Empire, all others are colonies. This is the situation that should be on the African continent. Independent countries like East Africa that are not indigenous are truly unique.

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The first town.

"Since 1873, a large number of production equipment has been imported from Germany and other places, thus achieving leapfrog development of my country's industry. However, nearly 20 years have passed, and many equipment have fallen behind the times. East Africa's overall industrial technology and equipment also need to be innovated, especially in the non-emerging industrial field."

East Africa has always wanted to upgrade its own industrial system, because most of the imported equipment in East Africa was in the 1970s, but the actual age of some equipment may be earlier.

Ernst went on to say: "At present, old industrial equipment is mainly concentrated in the inland areas of the central and eastern regions, so this time the technical equipment innovation should start from the inland areas first, and at the same time, it should focus on adopting East Africa's own new technologies and new equipment."

"Of course, old equipment still does not need to be eliminated immediately, and it should be concentrated in the west and north, so as to achieve further healthy development of my country's overall industrial strength."

In the 1970s, East Africa's territory was still mainly in the east, so the industry was basically deployed in the eastern region. In the 1980s, with the development of the central region in East Africa, a large number of backward production capacity was transferred to the central region, which promoted the rise of the central heavy industry base.

Of course, in the mid-to-late 1980s, with the improvement of East Africa's education, economy, and R&D capabilities, East Africa prioritized the deployment of several industrial fields in the central region, including electricity, automobiles, railways, etc., and barely achieved the same level of industrial level between the central and eastern regions.

However, compared with the eastern coastal areas, the overall strength of the inland areas of East Africa is still relatively weak. After all, the current world's technology center is in Europe, and the eastern coastal areas can more conveniently connect to the world market.

Therefore, coastal cities such as Dar es Salaam and Mombasa can stand out among all the cities in East Africa. You should know that this is the result of the policy preference for inland areas when the East African government is biased.

"The current development level of our inland areas is good and can already form competitiveness with the eastern coastal areas, but except for the central and eastern regions, the economic development of other regions in the country is seriously lagging behind, especially the northern region that was incorporated into our territory earlier."

"Now with the further deepening of economic cooperation between East Africa and the Abyssinian Empire, we should deploy a batch of industries near the Abyssinian Empire to reduce production costs and further optimize the industry."

Although there are a large number of backward industries in East Africa, these industries are relatively advanced in backward areas, especially for remote areas in East Africa.

The northern region of East Africa is not a small place. It mainly includes five major regions: the Azande Plateau, the upper Nile Basin, the Ethiopian Plateau, the plains along the coast of Lake Turkana, and the Somali Plains. The overall population size has reached more than 10 million.

Although it is far behind the central and eastern regions, it is temporarily superior to the southern and western regions in terms of the whole country, so the focus of this backward industrial transfer is the northern region.

Of course, there is another consideration for transferring these backward industries to the north, that is, to be close to the regional market. In the land economy, East Africa itself occupies the central and southern African continent except Cape Town, so the land foreign economy is mainly in the northwest of West Africa and North Africa across the Sahara Desert.

After these old equipment introduced in the 1970s were moved to the north, they can continue to shine and complete their final retirement tasks, and as for the end point, they will be completely eliminated.

Moreover, it is much easier for equipment to migrate to the north now than in the 1970s and 1980s. With the construction and popularization of railways and highways in East Africa, the transportation conditions in East Africa today are much better than those a dozen years ago.

In the past, industrial equipment in the period of East African industry migration to the inland was completed by human and animal power, and the degree of hardship was much greater than it is now.

"The north, especially the northwest, is the bridgehead for my country to connect with West Africa. With the development of the Sigmaringen Royal Territory, Belgian Congo and German Cameroon, the northwest will be an important part of East Africa's foreign trade in the future."

"The central and eastern regions should further optimize their industries, especially in the fields of railways, steel, electricity, automobiles, equipment manufacturing, etc., continue to make efforts to expand the advantages of emerging industries and improve the production efficiency of traditional industries. In the field of traditional industries, the future goal of central and eastern East Africa is to catch up with European and American countries."

As for the positioning of the west, East Africa, especially the coastal areas, has a relatively high starting point. Regions such as Luanda, Cabinda, Benguela, etc. are all aimed at Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, so in addition to developing traditional industries, they will also focus on developing emerging industries.

It is the same as the development strategy of East Africa in the central region. After all, the eastern coastal areas of East Africa are anchored in the Eurasian market, the inland areas are anchored in the national market, and the future of the west is anchored in the European and American (mainly Latin American) markets.

Countries like Argentina and Brazil are both countries with good purchasing power and are important markets that cannot be ignored, especially Argentina, which currently exports a large number of agricultural products to Europe and has a per capita living standard that is catching up with developed countries and regions. The routes in the west of East Africa are directly connected to South America, so there is a geographical advantage.

Furthermore, Latin America is rich in natural resources, which can facilitate the purchase of raw materials by coastal cities in the west of East Africa, and the resource endowment of the west itself is not bad.

In the past, Angola was one of the resource-rich countries in Africa, especially the richest in oil resources. In addition, it is close to the industrial zone in the middle of East Africa, so it meets all the requirements of industrial development.

With the construction of the two railway trunk lines, it is bound to be connected with the central and eastern parts in the future and become the main industrial distribution area in East Africa.

Therefore, East Africa attaches much more importance to the west, especially Angola, than to the north. In the final analysis, backward industries are the leftover soup of the central and eastern parts of East Africa, and the northern part can only eat this leftovers, but East Africa’s arrangement for Angola is obviously not the case.

In addition to the above areas, only the southern region has no detailed planning. East Africa is not active in the development of the southern region. One reason is that there is only the British Cape Town colony in the south. The relationship between the two sides is poor, so trade is not frequent and it has a buffer zone.

Although the northern part of East Africa also borders the United Kingdom, the transportation conditions in Egypt and Sudan are extremely poor. As for British Somaliland, it is too small to pose a threat to East Africa.